Hoo boy…

Is she “ethnically challenged”???

At a recent Americans for Prosperity-sponsored “Citizens Watchdog Training” workshop in Warren, Michigan, one of their speakers was a prominent Michigan conservative and member of the North Oakland Tea Party Patriots, Norm Hughes. During his talk, he used a phrase I have honestly never heard before: “ethnically challenged”. What is “ethnically challenged”? I have no idea.

Kids aren’t going to charter schools if they’re “A” students. They go to charter schools because they’re failing students and, by and large, the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families, ethnically challenged families…

Ethnically challenged. Hmmm… I wonder if he means “black”? Maybe “brown”? Whattya think? Could it be?

Naw. NOBODY is so crassly racist that they would use such an offensive phrase in public where other people could hear it, right? Hmmm…must mean something else. I wonder what…

Good going GOP. You have the knack of endearing yourselves to the voters in this country. You angry white men are rendering yourselves irrelevant fast. Your racism is oozing out of your pores. Keep it up. 2014 can’t come fast enough.

wmrharris

Quite possibly one of the most stupid comments ever. Talk about stepping on your own talking points. For better or worse, charters are a core component in so-called choice options.

I’ve seen that phrase used once, and in a very different context. 30 years ago in a seminar on educational diversity one of the instructors pointed out that the affluent kids of affluent non-WASP parents who never perceived any sort of racism in their lives were still “ethnically challenged” because of self-sustaining social connections of the historically WASP elites. Not having great-great-grandparents who blatantly discriminated against Irish is a handicap in access to opportunity today, and it correlates to ethnicity.

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Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has admitted to knowing about the poisoning of Flint's drinking water with lead. Despite this, there are STILL Flint residents who cannot drink their tap water without the use of a water filter.

Mitchell Robinson is associate professor and chair of music education at Michigan State University. His research is focused on music education and education policy. Follow him on Facebook HERE and Twitter at @mrobmsu. His own blog is at MitchellRobinson.net.

Tawana “Honeycomb” Petty is a mother, social justice organizer, youth advocate, poet and author. She was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and is intricately involved in water rights, digital justice and visionary organizing work in Detroit. You can learn more about Tawana "Honeycomb" Petty by visiting honeycombthepoet.com. She's on Twitter at @CombsThePoet.